Mr. Bradshaw gave me the opportunity to draft a reply to his treatise
on the Friday afternoon prior to its publication, but personal time
constraints have prevented me from reading it in full until now
(Saturday morning, Dec. 8).

This will be brief, because I do not disagree with Mr. Bradshaw's
analysis of the writings of William Lind, nor his assertion that
violence does, indeed, change things, including governments. I also
agree that the United States of America has grown into an empire.
However, his two examples of similar states to the one we live in are
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Godwin's
Law in only one step! While the potential for
government-initiated domestic violence exists in America, and the
U.S. is quite cavalier about deaths caused to the civilians of the
countries we have invaded in recent decades, it hardly rises to the
levels of either of those two former nations. Things are still being
done retail by the U.S., not wholesale as was done by the Nazis and
Soviets. As of yet, no gulags, no pogroms, no mass graves, no death
camps.

He goes further in stating that violence was needed to remove the
Nazis and Soviets from power. Well, yes and no. Certainly, the end
result of World War II was the end of Nazi Germany. But I sort of
remember the Soviet Union falling more from internal rot than from
violence. Economically, the USSR was a failure, and could not compete
with the freer economic systems. Certainly there was little internal
fighting on the scale of a guerilla war. It was more that the peoples
of the USSR decided not to obey the national government. There was no
civil war. Sure, there was some fighting, but it was localized and
very small-scale. (And the resulting government of Russia is still
very authoritarian, but there is no history of Rule of Law in that
part of the world, so no alternative was seen as viable.)

That kind of regime change was what I was referring to in my original
essay, hopefully with a better ending. Which would be regime end
instead of regime change.

That is not to say that I am against self-defense. Far from it. Nor
do I think that there is a chance that our current situation will be
resolved without some violence. But that violence, of necessity being
conducted in some kind of guerrilla setting, or even individual
actions uncoordinated with or by any other person or group, will not
be what changes or renders irrelevant the current U.S. government.
People in power will nearly always fight to retain that power. Others
who had passively supported the government may be roused to make that
support overt and to resist anti-government activities. (Does "Love
it or leave it" ring a bell?) Only the decision in the minds of a
significant minority of Americans that the government is no longer
legitimate, no longer needed, and no longer desired, can do that.

Violence is tactics. The hearts and minds of Americans is strategy.
Mr. Bradshaw's extensive treatment of the tactics of resistance is
solid. However, I do not think that those tactics form a viable
strategy to resist the American government's destruction of our
liberty. We will have to agree to disagree on that point. Only
American individuals can decide, one by one, whether they prefer
freedom to the false security of government control. If they choose
the latter, as in the recent election, no amount of violence, however
conducted, will do more than inconvenience that government. Nor will
agorism do more than create a scapegoat for more government control
of our lives. The only possible strategy for success, IMHO, is to
spread the meme of liberty, one person at a time, and hope it goes
viral in the hard times coming over the next several years.